Lemon Coconut Icebox Cupcakes... for America

So, mostly for me, Summertime is a cooking and baking hiatus. Not because I'm so busy taking in the music festivals or paddleboarding or whatever people in the Chicago commercials are always doing while they raaaaave about summer in this city. My summer is pretty much one long grit of my teeth trying to limit my time with people I care about while I inevitably get the mooooost heat crabby. Avoiding any heat of any kind means never ever turning on my stove or oven or even walking by the pair of 'em while the pilot light is lit if I can manage it. 

But you know I also do not like to show up places emptyhanded, and even as I actively try not to let people see me at my worst (aka, hottest) over the summer, sometimes there's a holiday or a celebration and appearances must be made.

Real talk, it is not even hot this week in Chicago. It's like 72 and absolutely perfect, so that whole preamble was just because when I was PLANNING to make this recipe, I was peptalking myself like "Okay, I could make this even if it is like 90 degrees and 150% humidity as the Midwest is wont to be in July and you're hating life but still needing to be a decent guest" and thus a dream was borne. An American icebox cupcake dream.

In addition to the non-negotiable of not requiring an oven or stove (which is enough to win my heart forever), let me tell you why else these icebox cupcakes are the best:

1. Shutterbean made them and so they obvi look amazing and beautiful and perfectly lit in her version.

2. Every single ingredient can be best obtained at Trader Joe's.

3. They are moooostly about assembly and require practically no skill, which is my most favorite ratio of those two things.

4. You can adapt them in about a million ways by changing up different parts of the recipe which is honestly the only thing I even like about baking and usually doing so throws absolutely everything off because you really can't be so cavalier about such things when you're baking but since you're NOT baking this time, you totally can. For example, I swapped lemon cookies out for coconut cookies and left the raspberries out altogether because I planned to do toasted coconut on top for fancies, but more on that LATER because, drama.

5. Icebox is an adorable throwback name for a refrigerator which means that our ancestors have been making these for at least decades if not centuries, so like, helllooooooooooo heritage, I smell a 4th of July miracle a-comin'!

6. They're so easy, I had to stall for time whining about the non-existent heat otherwise this wouldn't even be a post. It may remain unclear throughout why it even is.

Cool, we have a super robust list of why these are awesome and about a hundred pictures I took along the way, so let's see if I can't speed this along a little so you can get to your patriotic Jell-o shots or whatever YOU plan on doing to celebrate our nation's birth.

Here's what you need:

• 1 pint heavy whipping cream
• 1/3 cup powdered sugar
• 1 tsp vanilla extract (pure if I need to say so, because we're not barbarians)
• 1 tbsp lemon zest (or if you are lazy and don't plan ahead, as much zest as you can get from the lemons you already own, which for me was one large and one small and did NOT make one full tablespoon)
• 1/2 cup lemon curd 
• Multiples of 3 or 4 wafer cookies, times how many cupcakes you want to make. I clearly did not do math first and my box had 72 cookies and so I did layers of 3 times 21, which is 63, because maybe I needed to try a couple first
• Fruits, or whatever else you use to make up for (spoiler alert!) burning your coconut
• Cupcake sleeves or whatever frou-frou thing they're actually called. Enough for all your cupcakes, genius.

So first, I got my little cups laid out in my multiple little tupperwares because I am not old or grown-up enough to have a cupcake carrier yet, but also sort of don't want one because holy storage crisis.
Then I put a coconut cookie in each just to sort of set the scene, you know. Get the party started.

Because, actually it was way premature to start wafer assembly, since I needed to first spend infinity minutes whipping cream. I get that our ancestral icebox maidens probably did this by hand, so the ensuing whine about how long this took is totally a Millennial Patience Fail, but also, oh my god, is this mixer not ELECTRIC?!? 

Whipping cream in a bowl. That's when you start standing there, literally not doing anything so it's really strange how cranky it's going to make you when it takes like ten minutes to get to what is described by Shutterbean as "soft peaks".

Once soft peaks are achieved and you've collected your trophy for participating, you're going to add in your powdered sugar and PURE vanilla extract and continue that beating until you've achieved "firm peaks". These are like soft peaks, but firmer.

Then you're going to bust out the magical miracle ingredient: lemon curd! Four HEAPING teaspoons later and your whip cream just went from moderately unhealthy on account of how it is fuuuuuulll fat cream to legit death by cream and butter because pssst, that's why lemon curd is so good: Butter.

Anyway, dump that in with abandon because, hey, we're celebrating Amerrrrrrrrica and ain't nothing more American than full fat cream and butter mixed with nominal amounts of fruit.

Speaking of nominal amounts of fruit, you're going to also be getting into a lemon zest scene with this. Since you're sort of fancy, but maybe also not so fancy that you have an actual fruit zester, you just sort of jankily grate it with a cheese grater, because you're basically kitchen MacGuyver.

Once you've got a teaspoon of zest, or no more lemon to zest as was the case in my particular scenario, dump that in too. Once it's in, you're going to fold that and the curd into the whipped cream.

Folding is fancy stirring. 

Whipped cream's all done. You know what time it is? 

Assembly o'clock!

 Get your cookies, get your cream, and get to stacking. 

Because Shutterbean knew how to count and plan, she did four cookie layers. On account of me being so reckless and wild with math in the kitchen, I did three. I also didn't do the additional plop of lemon curd on top, because I thought things were maybe getting a little OOC with the lemon curd.

 I think everyone's going to be just fine, so chill.

If I sound slightly defensive about my whimsically innovative approach to baking, it is on account of the following, which was my attempt at a kitchen hack of toasting coconut flakes in my toaster oven and wound up being... well, this:

Riiiiiiiiiight. 

So coconut was no longer a pretty or fun addition to these cupcakes. Hit the fridge and lo and behold, I had patriotic fruit at the ready! Personally, I am not so into the stars and stripes cake, etc. approach to the 4th of July and wasn't thrilled with the ruining of my epic lemon-coconut flavor pairing, but in a pinch, using strawberries and blueberries for a 4th dessert probably looks intentional and whatever, it's not the end of the world. 

And, I'll admit it: turned out pretty adorable.

Now they're so cute!
They kind of remind me of that Kandinsky painting. You know the one. I had it on my wall for all of college after the First Year Poster Sale and I bet you did too.

The one sort of sad thing about making fun treats for a party is you really shouldn't have a sample because you're messing with an already limited number of viable treats. That is normally very difficult for me to achieve but oh hi, number SEVEN reason why this recipe is amazing: You've got to put them in the "icebox" for four or more hours to properly soften up and become like little mushy love pillows so you won't even be tempted until the middle of the night and you'll be asleep. 

MIRACLE RECIPE.

(I am so evangelically into how amazing this recipe is to make, I genuinely do not care how it winds up tasting.)